"We are breathing, we are seething / We are hardly underway"

[hermionesviolin]

I was reading Velveteen Rabbi's post "Amos and Hosea: northern prophets of anger and love," and she quotes Amos 5:21-25, and I was just really struck.

I loathe, I spurn your festivals,
I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies.
If you offer Me burnt offerings -- or your meal offerings --
I will not accept them; I will pay no heed
To your gifts of fatlings.
Spare Me the sound of your hymns
And let me not hear the music of your lutes
But let justice well up like water,
Righteousness like an unfailing stream.
Did you offer sacrifice and oblation to Me
Those forty years in the wilderness, O House of Israel?

God does not ask for festivals, assemblies, or sacrifices, But let justice well up like water, Righteousness like an unfailing stream. That's a really challenging demand to make of us.

I also really like the reminder that God was with the Israelites during those forty years in the wilderness when they had nothing but themselves to offer God. (Which, of course, reminds me that we often say, usually right before collecting the Offertory, that all we have comes from God -- and sometimes even say that it belongs to God, is just entrusted to us for a time -- though it's hard to really believe that.)

Comments

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for quoting that. What a powerful passage. And it's really making me think, considering we're heading into high-octane holiday season. God never asked us to celebrate Jesus' birth -- we made that one up all on our own. He simply wants us to love him and love others and obey.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I like this translation better than the one my Western Civ class had in their textbook, which renders the second line in such a way as to make it easily glossable as "God hates meetings."

And, I mean, who doesn't? But yay for social justice.